Welcome to Part 3 of our WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn a website into an automated traffic machine using WordPress.
In Part One of this series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do is add web content consistently to bring web traffic!)
In Part 2, we discussed critical setup decisions. We helped you understand the best way to get started if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set everything up if you already have a website, and what to do if your existing website was built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this article, we will look at the configuration phase of the WordPress traffic automation system. You will learn what makes an expertly configured site different, and what kind of work is required to make sure that when everything is fully configured, new traffic will automatically start flowing when you add web content to your site.
WordPress Web Traffic Automation Blueprint – Configuration
Finding ways to attract more visitors to one’s website is often cited by website owners as one of the greatest challenges they face online. Businesses are becoming ever more competitive and are looking for every opportunity they can to increase their competitiveness online.
The ability to automatically generate traffic on demand is a tremendous competitive advantage. For WordPress users, an expertly configured website means having a significant advantage from the very beginning.
Configuration Is The Difference
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally set up by a website-building expert but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress can offer.
Here’s one way to explain the main difference:
With a WordPress site that has been expertly configured you get a professional web presence with online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured website gives you a web presence and a built-in automated online business marketing system!)
Not only is additional work required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, it also takes a special kind of expertise.
To illustrate this point here’s a little story.
Ludicrous Or Fair? You Decide …
Things were going just fine in the gizmo-making plant when the equipment suddenly stopped.
As no one could figure out what happened, the floor manager decided to call in an expert.
The expert arrived shortly after being summoned and, without saying a word, immediately went to the main control box. After staring silently at the circuit board for what seemed like 5 minutes, the expert then produced a teeny-weeny hammer from his tool belt and made a gentle tap about one cm from the top-right edge of the control unit.
Immediately, every machine in the plant sprang to life.
The manager was filled with joy as he thanked the expert, who left as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days after resolving the incident, the factory manager received a request for payment of $5,000.
The factory manager called the expert, demanding to know why they were expected to pay so much for less than 5 minutes work. He promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice arrived and was placed on the manager’s desk. Upon opening it, this is what he saw:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive new visitors to their sites.
In the story we’ve just described, how much money did the gizmo factory stand to lose when production ground to a halt and no one in the business had the expertise to fix it? Did the expert not have the right to ask to be compensated fairly for years spent developing the knowledge and expertise that enabled him to immediately repair a very costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have your WP site fully configured so all you had to do is publish new content and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and dozens of other traffic-generating web properties would be immediately notified, how much time and money would you save?
(How much better would your business be if you could automate the process of driving traffic to your website?)
While experts often make complex things look easy, it rarely is that simple or easy.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site requires more than adding some pages with content and configuring settings for clients. It also requires knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things such as:
- Which plugins need to be installed for specific things to occur on your site.
- Which services need to be set up and activated to get certain outcomes
- Which internal and external settings you need to configure in order to ensure that things will function as planned, etc.
(Generating web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
This part of the WordPress traffic automation system is not technically difficult, but it’s quite complicated. It’s not just about installing a plugin, configuring some settings in your dashboard area or clicking a button … it’s all this and much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a complex process that involves your server, your website or blog, and various external sites and services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring a few WordPress settings)
If all the steps involved in the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look like this …
(A simplistic diagram showing the configuration process)
Let’s take a look at these steps in more detail.
Your Server – Configuration
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your web hosting account for site installation purposes (this is normally done during the Setup phase). What we are talking about, is tweaking settings and options in your server that affect how your site will handle all web traffic …
(During the configuration stage, your web hosting account settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all web traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the web traffic your site may attract will be unwanted traffic like bot spam, security threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This part of the configuration process, therefore, requires planning for good and unwanted traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This can include things like spam protection and securing server files, to configuring domain and email forwarding, setting up htaccess and error page redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page errors, etc?)
Once your server settings have been fine-tuned and configured, the next step is to set up and configure various third-party sites and online solutions.
Configuring External Sites
The basic concept of adding external sites is that all of your content should be published from a central location (your site) and from there, it will radiate outwards to other parts of your web traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once these external platforms have been added to your configuration, content with links pointing back to your website will get automatically syndicated to these platforms, indexed by search engines and shared to other social media accounts, even to visitors attracted to the platform itself. Your content and business will be given exposure to a new audience and source of traffic.
Some of the sites and services will need to have accounts set up before configuring your site to save time and some will need to be done later, during the automation phase.
For example, here are just some of the accounts you will need to have set up:
Google Webmaster Tools
(Google Webmasters)
Google Search Console lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides you with a range of important information, tools and reports about your website.
After setting up your account and entering site details with Google, you can use this information to integrate and automate traffic-related settings in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s performance, SEO, user engagement, marketing campaigns, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, organic referrals, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account and site data are set up, visitor tracking information can be added to all pages in WordPress via plugins and and sent to many other useful applications.
Bing Data And Tools
(Bing Data And Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. Once your account and site data with Bing have been set up, this information can be used with web traffic-related settings in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part Two, WordPress offers users a hosted (WordPress.com) and a self-hosted (WordPress.org) option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress platform if you plan to build a professional online presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful features, which can be accessed by various WordPress plugins. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate this into your web traffic generation system in Part 4 of this series.
Social Media Accounts
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and social bookmarking accounts and drive new traffic to your site)
You will need your various social media accounts set up in order to configure these as part of your traffic generation system.
Once you have set up and configured everything, you will be able to syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and attract new visitors to your site.
Make sure you have accounts set up with all of the well-known social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are many social sites you can set up. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just choose the ones that will work well with your system and/or content syndication tools (we will look at some of these tools in more detail during the Automation phase).
(You can post your content to many social sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Sites, Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of new online technology platforms and content aggregators that can act as second-tier sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free levels, and some are paid services.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that allows you to add an RSS feed from your site …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your RebelMouse social feed.
There are many different solutions you can incorporate into your own traffic system. Please feel free to contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these, or to discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your server settings and set up accounts with third-party services, it’s time to configure your WordPress site.
WordPress – Configuring Your Website Or Blog
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to make sure that your global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some key areas.
Configuring Global WordPress Settings
By default, WordPress includes a Settings menu that allows you to modify your site’s main settings …
(WordPress dashboard menu – Settings)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline can influence your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings Section)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings section contains a powerful and often overlooked automated traffic notification system …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings)
As described below the Update Services section title,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you or your webmaster have intentionally chosen to discourage search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically ping the list of services entered into the Update Services text area
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, this section displays only one entry …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature Of WordPress)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically – just add a list containing all of the update services you want notified to this section …
(WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically!)
Download A Comprehensive List Of Ping Services For Your WordPress Site!
Click the link below to download a comprehensive list of reliable and authoritative ping services for your WordPress site or blog:
Download A List Of Ping Services For Your WordPress Site
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Note: If you need help setting up the list of ping services on your site, we recommend using a professional web services provider. You can find professional WordPress service providers in our WordPress Services Directory.
Reading Settings
This section affects how visitors will see your content when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings on this page can influence web traffic. For example, your choice of displaying the full text vs summaries of your post, affects how your content shows up in RSS readers and RSS email campaigns, and could play a part in someone’s decision to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your website or blog to get the rest of the content from summaries, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
As far as your traffic system is concerned, however, the main setting here is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is ticked or not.
Normally, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked enables your site to instantly ping your update services list whenever a new post gets published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason to discourage search engines from visiting your site, do not check this box …
(Settings Menu – Reading Settings)
Discussion
Although discussion settings are mostly concerned with how users engage with content on your site, you have the option to allow notifications to sites linked to from your posts, and to allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks). This can work for you, but it can also drive bad traffic in the form of SPAM comments …
(Global Settings – Discussion Settings)
Permalink Settings
Permalinks allow you to create SEO-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalinks)
The examples below show some of the options for configuring your site’s permalinks …
(Configuring search-friendly URLS)
If you need help setting up permalinks, see this step-by-step tutorial: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
Configuring WordPress Plugin Settings For Traffic Generation
WordPress provides users with plugins that can add just about every kind of functionality to your site, including plugins that add traffic generation capabilities.
Here are examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help drive more visitors to your site
WordPress Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your site for dealing with both good traffic and bad traffic. No matter what type of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, securing your websites is something you cannot ignore.
(WordPress Security Plugins stop bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress site invisible to attacks from hackers and botnets.
To learn more, go here:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving improving the way search engines like Google and Bing find and index your web pages …
(WP SEO Plugin – Yoast SEO)
A plugin like Yoast SEO (previously called WordPress SEO by Yoast) can significantly improve your website’s SEO. Once properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines to find and index, it also lets you configure how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
Social Plugins
Allowing visitors to share your content online can help drive significant traffic to your site, especially if you post content that adds real value to readers.
(You can add social features to your website easily with free or inexpensive WordPress plugins)
You can easily add social sharing to your site using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins.
Many social plugins allow you to choose which sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom post messages, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of likes), etc. Some social share plugins even allow you to set up protected content sections on your pages which visitors can unlock by liking your page.
WordPress – Traffic Features In Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help improve your site’s traffic generation capabilities.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring design and layout elements of your website, some themes also give you built-in features that let you improve SEO and site navigation structure for better indexing, add tracking code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes allow you to configure settings and options for better traffic results)
With many themes, adding social sharing features to your pages is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes come with built-in social sharing features)
Other Areas To Configure
Last (but by no means least) in the traffic configuration process, are the things that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
These include:
Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for a growth in traffic, it’s important to plan not only how to handle bad and good traffic but also for all the situations that can cause serious damage to your business as more and more people find and begin to visit your website.
If you engage in any form of commercial activity online (or plan to), it’s important that your site is found to comply with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate how business online is done.
(Does Your Website Or Blog Comply With The Law?)
We have created a detailed article about adding compliance pages to WordPress here:
WordPress Tags & Categories
Categories & tags help search engines classify and index your pages, which improves traffic.
(Post categories help to improve your site’s search engine optimization, which improves traffic.)
As we recommend in this article, it’s best to set up your website’s post tags and post categories earlier on, during the Website Planning Process.
When configuring your web site to automate and improve web traffic, you will want to review and make sure that the post tags and categories you have set up.
Add A Site Map To Your WordPress Site
A site map that lists all of your posts and pages to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external sites discover your site’s content …
(Site Map – great for visitors and beneficial for web traffic too!)
It’s important to note that an HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same things. An HTML site map is a web page that links to all other content on your site, while an XML sitemap is mostly filled with code that only search engine bots can read. Although Google can index your site just from an XML sitemap (which plugins like Yoast SEO will create for you – see earlier section), making it easier for visitors to find more pages on your site can result in increased traffic.
Your 404 Page Not Found
When visitors searching for your website type in the wrong URL or click on links pointing to destinations on your site that no longer exist, they will typically be greeted with an error page (known as a 404 page) …
(A 404 Page)
A 404 Error Page can be turned into a useful source of traffic to your functional pages …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 page can be set up on your web server, there are WordPress plugins that let you easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic System: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once you have your website or blog expertly configured and fully set up, all you then have to do to attract traffic is publish content on a consistent basis.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved and elaborate , requiring the configuration and integration of a number of different components and web properties …
(WP Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Checklist)
The kind of knowledge and expertise required to perform this stage of the traffic automation process typically takes some web professionals months to acquire.
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the aspects of the process that can be automated. This step is covered in the next article in our series.
This is the end of Section Three
To keep reading, click on the link below:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive article series aimed at helping you learn how to grow your business online inexpensively using a WordPress-powered website or blog and proven web marketing methods.
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"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum
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